Crowdsourcing Solutions for Humanity and the Planet: Columbia Does It Again!

Know no barriers.  Founders, tackle the large problems and iteratively narrow the solutions to make a difference.  That is what our student and alumni founders are doing at Columbia with their impact ventures.

Last Wednesday at Columbia, hardworking venture teams and early stage investors discussed humanitarian, social, and environmental problems, solutions, and scalable market opportunities to make the biggest impact.  A Spring cohort of thirteen startup teams of talented students, researchers, faculty, and alumni in my impact venture incubator course competed for the top seven spots in round 1 judging to pitch live at Demo Day.  They were joined by the top seven venture teams of the Fall cohort of sixteen startups.  It was impressive to see the traction all of these early ventures have made.

In six weeks of programming, venture teams comprised of people from across Columbia University’s schools, programs, and alumni community validated problems with stakeholders, proposed solutions, created and iterated MVPs, derived go to market strategies, drafted pro forma financials, chose actionable performance metrics, and pitched their ventures to expert mentors and investors.  The presentations of their business highlights were met with insightful questions from investors evaluating their offerings.

Judges Pictured IRL:  Bridie Gahan (Lifeforce Ventures), Momo Bi (Empire State Development Venture Fund), Enki Toto (Salesforce Ventures Impact Fund), and Nancy Torres (Ulu Ventures). #womeninventure

Our ventures span many sectors:  climate impact/environmental sustainability, health and wellness, fintech, proptech/construction, edtech, civtech, safety wearables, journalism/new media, sustainable food, and DEI.  Their offerings consist of software solutions, marketplaces, media platforms, and products.

This for-credit course serves as an opportunity to realize carefully researched market opportunities for which our founders have insight and a personal connection to the problems addressed.  My objective is to create a community beyond this course to bond, track progress/outcomes, and to provide ongoing advisory and networking opportunities.  I am personally committed to assist this community we are building to facilitate partnerships, pilots, customer acquisition, hiring, and strategic investments to enable positive impact and sustainable financial opportunity.

I created this course in the same spirit as Columbia’s inaugural startup hackathon, Hacking for Humanity and the Planet, where 300 participants, 88 of them founders, coalesced into 46 teams pushing their ideas forward into actionable business ventures.  

We are collaboratively making lasting change our people and planet urgently need.

One people.  One planet.  Let’s do this thing!

Feel free to contact me to learn more about any of our 29 ventures going through this programming as well as to put you in touch with our guest speakers who are raising Series A and beyond.

The Spring Cohort Impact Ventures.

The Fall Cohort Impact Ventures.

Spring Cohort Demo Day Awards.

First Place & Crowd Favorite:  Villa.  A maternal health platform improving outcomes of the underserved.  Patients can find community, learn and share information, and have easier access to social and community services. 

H4H Core Team:  Krystal Eimunjeze, Mailman SPH/ MHA, 2023; Katina Porras, Mailman SPH/ MHA, 2023; Karina Perez, Mailman SPH/ MHA, 2023; Dr. Siriesha Patnaik, Mailman SPH/ MHA, 2023; Clayton Graf, Mailman SPH/ MHA, 2023; Samantha Arthur, Mailman SPH/ MHA, 2023.

Through personalized content, community building, and connection to essential resources and services, Villa supports mothers in navigating the healthcare system from the moment they find out they are pregnant through postpartum.  By caring for mothers, Villa relieves costly burdens to the healthcare system that occur when women do not have access to the correct resources in this highly fragmented market.

Second Place:  Market Town.  Solving America’s small town needs and our national retail vacancy crisis through a digital marketplace and scoring mechanism, which is the first of its kind to identify real estate vacancies and community incentives to match them with eager businesses and entrepreneurs.

H4H Core Team:  Sophie Kimball, MBA/MPH, 2023; Alexandra (Oli) Gurley, MBA, 2023; and Evan Reinsberg, MBA, 2023.

Market Town is a region-agnostic, two-sided platform with durable incentives and alignment with regional needs.  Market Town uses a proprietary economic development algorithm to determine what businesses individual cities need not only to survive but also to thrive.  Market Town’s proprietary scoring metric identifying what businesses cities need is a solution that does not currently exist in the marketplace, neither does a full-scale retail vacancy dashboard.

Third Place:  Biome.  Sustainable solutions for apartment living. 

H4H Core Team:  John Quattrocchi, CBS 2023; Elena Shirokikh, CBS 2023; Madeline Moulton, CBS 2023; and Rachel Shah, CU Mailman School of Public Health, 2023.

Biome is designing a modular, self-installable solar solution for apartment windows.  The system is a solar panel, inverter, battery, and mounting bracket that can be set-up in an apartment window, similar to an A/C unit, and enables apartment dwellers to utilize solar power to lead a sustainable lifestyle and reduce their monthly electric bill.

Other notable ventures from the Spring cohort include:

GreenPact (Alexandra Born, CBS 2023; Harsha Balakrishnan, CBS 2023; Nicola Benatti, CBS 2023; Guillermo Dominguez, CBS 2023; and Constanza Goñi Trotti, CBS 2023).  GreenPact is a software platform that measures the environmental impact of the supply chains of food companies.

BalPo (Milloni Doshi, SIPA 2023; Riaz Jurney, CBS 1992; Dora Gutierrez, CBS 2016; Dakshesh Thacker, SIPA 2023).  BalPo is a mobile application empowering parents to counter child obesity.  BalPo aims to do this by providing parents with the right information, providing personalized meal recommendations, and building a community of support for parents to help solve their child’s nutritional challenges. 

Fall Cohort Demo Day Awards.

Crowd Favorite:  Sortile.  Material sorting technology to reduce waste in the textile industry. 

H4H Core Team:  Constanza Gomez, CBS MBA 2022; Agustina Mir, SIPA MPA 2021.

Sortile uses its own proprietary technology to automate the sorting process of textile waste and to efficiently identify those fibers that can be recycled.  Sortile uses Nir spectroscopy and ML to identify fiber composition.  Instead of searching for clothing tags, one simply places one item on the device to get an accurate and fast identification.

92 million tons of post-consumer textile waste are generated worldwide annually, of which the vast majority are landfilled or incinerated.  The large variety of materials and colors in textiles makes it extremely difficult to sort for the recycling industry.  Today's manual sorting requires reading clothing tags which is slow, inaccurate, and costly.  This encourages sorters to downcycle instead of fiber recycle and create yarns to make new clothing.  Sortile offers a solution for that problem.

Crowd Favorite Runner Up:  Generation Conscious.  Plastic free laundry and other personal care product dispensers. 

H4H Core Team:  Matthew Rosenbaum, CBS MBA 2022; Greg Genco, Amherst College, BA 2011; and Lily Tagiuri, CU Architecture & Urban Design 2010.

Generation Conscious places a refill station at a central location or laundry room on a college campus or in a building.  Students or residents sign up for a refill plan and bring reusable containers to the station to refill low carbon detergent sheets (first product).  No more plastic jugs, lower carbon all around.  This low cost solution addresses both the problem of plastic waste as well as hygiene insecurity among vulnerable groups. 

Other notable ventures from the Fall cohort with impressive traction include:

Tough Leaf (Amir Zahlan, CBS EMBA 2022 and Wissam Akra, CBS EMBA 2022).  Tough Leaf is the DEI marketplace for the construction industry.

Soluminos (Cynthia Leung, CU SPS MS Sustainability Mgt 2020, Jade Qui, University of Cambridge 2020 & CU GSAS MS 2022, and Thomas Scheiter, CU MS Sustainability Mgt 2021).  Soluminos provides portable electric generators for food carts and trucks.

Invest in Her Art (Diana Mashia, CU SIPA 2022; Preetika Subramaniam, CU SPS 2022; and Hanna Wentz, CU/Barnard 2022).  Invest in Her Art is a marketplace platform seeking to solve gender inequity in visual contemporary art and is a leading innovator in the use of NFTs in this area.  The Invest in Her Art platform is a transaction-focused and impact-driven solution to address the multi-billion dollar lost opportunity of underrepresentation of women and non-binary artists.

Pelican (Alexandra Bono, CBS EMBA 2022).  Pelican simplifies gift giving for education through gift registry and employee benefits.

Opal (Jen Chiang, CBS EMBA 2023).  Opal offers discreet safety products for women and other vulnerable groups.

Hubbub (Carolina Perez, CU SEAS 2022 & Patrick Varuzza, CU SEAS 2020).  Hubbub is a marketplace of previously owned dorm room and household basics, including electronics and exercise equipment, centered in high residential turnover urban areas.  Hubbub uses micro-logistics hubs consisting of temporary storage locations strategically placed nearby concentrated markets of its users.  

GEM (Lulu Arias, CBS 2022). GEM is developing a simple to use but comprehensive standardized software solution to evaluate the DEI performance for small and medium enterprises currently underserved in the market.

A special thanks to all of the following people for their support of the H4H Venture Incubator, our talented entrepreneurs, and their mission driven ventures.

Our Judges.  

Hannah Friedman (Closed Loop Partners), John Majeski (Portola Valley Partners), Osei Van Horne (JP Morgan), Robert Delman (Golden Seeds), Enki Toto (Salesforce Ventures Impact Fund), Evan Boswell Hamilton (Upfront Ventures), Nancy Torres & Serena Rivera-Korver (Ulu Ventures), Andrew Karsh (Bay Bridge Ventures), Momo Bi (Empire State Development Venture Fund), Jack Knellinger (Capria Ventures), Ben York (RampRate), Allison Williams (Jazz Venture Partners), Barbara Roberts (Roberts & Co), Jeppe Høier (Maersk Growth), Mike Brown (Bowery Capital), David Bolocan (Trailridge Advisors), and Bridie Gahan (Lifeforce Capital).

Our Guest Speakers.

Rich Mokuolu and Roland Mokuolu (Partsimony), Michael Margolis (GV), Dana Weeks (MedTransGo), Zev Eigen (Syndio), Samantha Diamond (Culture Connect/Axiell Group), Barbara Roberts (Roberts & Co.), Enki Toto (Salesforce Ventures Impact Fund), Manmeet Kaur (CHW Cares), Dani Pascarella (OneEleven), Yaniv Kalish (SolarKal), Mandy Price (Kanarys).

Our Expert Mentors.

Sandeep Tyagi (Estee Capital), Barbara Roberts (Roberts & Co.), Sylvia Wong (UN Population Fund), David Wei (SolarKal), Neal Rickner (Elevation Ventures), Stefan Lehmann-Karp (Morgan Stanley Multicultural Innovation Lab), John Majeski (Portola Valley Partners), David Bolocan (Trailridge Advisors), Dr. Lyndsey Burton (AWS), Evan Boswell Hamilton (Upfront Ventures), Marty Ringlein (Adventure Fund), Ben York(RampRate), Robert Delman (Golden Seeds), Shashi Srikantan (Level Up Ventures), and Stephen Wunker(New Markets Advisors).

Thank you, Barbara and John, for attending every session and making yourselves available for additional consultation and networking for our venture teams! 

Our Course Facilitators.  

I am grateful to my wonderful course assistant Adetola Olatunji CBS 2023, Tamer Fund program manager and faculty assistant Reilly O’Hara, and Tamer Center events coordinator Ife Collymore.   A big thanks as well to my stellar independent study student, Bridie Gahan CBS 2022, who as of this month is now a Principal at Lifeforce Capital.

Thanks for contributing to an amazing community, everyone!

#startups #entrepreneurship #climateimpact #sustainability #socialenterprise #socialimpact #columbiauniversity #columbiabusinessschool #whycbs #venturecapital #womeninventure #womenintech #capitalforgood #impactinvesting #cwib #investinourplanet